Cooked Squirrel?

As Mom sleeps peacefully in her bed, I gaze out at the gray fog as it creeps slowly along San Bruno Mountain. I try to put the monster that resides in my mind, the skilled nursing home, aside acting much like a child who hides under the covers when his parents turn off the light hoping it will never appear.

I think, once again, of the stories Mom would tell us about her Texas days. Being a city girl she never knew that squirrel was actually a part of the East Texas food pyramid. Squirrels for her were cute furry little things you fed peanuts to in the park. So when her father-in-law presented her with a freshly skinned squirrel she had no idea what to do with it. So she put the whole squirrel into a giant stew pot, added water and let it boil. Needless to say when it was "cooked" it looked and tasted like a gray mass of slightly hairy rubber. Her failure in the kitchen was further proof to her mother-in-law that her son had made a huge mistake when he married a damned Yankee!